Waylon's first sentence is probably the key to the whole thing. Any non-profit tends to be run by its executive director (in this case commissioner) for the benefit of the staff in headquarters. You have to grow so you can hire more employees and justify higher salaries. Whether or not the activity is in the best interests of the non-profits members or beneficiaires.
It's true for the American Bar Association. It's true for hospitals. It's true for member based lobbying groups. There is no reason to think it wouldn't be true with college conferences. Unless and until the Presidents stand up and scream "no more" this will continue.
It is the same with for-profit entities. About 60-70% of public company/public company M&A ends up not working out (easiest way to get a doctorate in Finance is to do a research paper on this phenomenon. There are hundreds of them out there). The combined company is worth less than the two independent companies were over the long term. So why do it? CEO's want to run bigger companies because that means more power and more money for them.
There are FOUR people in the entire country that are adamantly in favor of expansion: Jim Delaney, Larry Scott, Mike Slive, and John Swofford. They are the likely surviving conference commissioners in any consolidation, and running a corporation generating $400 million a year (which is what the conferences will be post expansion) deserves a very large paycheck. In my opinion, these 4 are driving 90% of the expansion activity. Destabilizing the Big 12 was child's play. Big companies do that to potential targets all the time. Once the genie escapes, it is very hard to get it back into the bottle. Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State are trying their hardest though.
Pretty much everyone else is on the fence or against expansion, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. FSU's announcement is a big deal, because it means cracks are forming in the ACC wall. For the Big 12 to stick together, everyone had to believe that expansion would stop if the Big 12 held. If another league is getting shaky, it will enable the Pac 12 to put enormous pressure on Texas to join or risk getting left out.
ESPN and CBS will insist on Florida State as the 14th and likely Georgia Tech as #15 for the SEC. Deeper market penetration in big markets is better then broader market penetration most of the time. I don't know who #16 would be. I think this is a suboptimal outcome for everyone but the conference commissioners. Hopefully the presidents can hold it together.
